Under Italian law, wine can be sold only in bottles.
In Sweden, wine needed to be sold in Tetra Pak - box model - before people started buying it. The illusion that it’s cheaper to buy 3 litres, and that it is easier to ‘just drink a glass’ seem to be the main reason for it success.
Being raised with an Italian kitchen culture, this seem very very wrong and unrespectful. Shocking really. I have said many time that selling wine in Tetra Pak is something they would never allow in Italy.
What I didn’t know, until reading this past Sundays Observer, was how right i really was.
The article in the Observer, title: Canned wine is fine for Paris but not in Italy, said:
Under Italian law, wine can be sold only in bottles.
The article was about how the people in the Conegliano/Valdobbiadene region in Italy were angry and upset over the fact that their famous grape, used to make their famous white sparkling wine with the same name, Prosecco, was sold in Red-Bull-looking cans, labeled Rich, and marketed with the face of Paris Hilton in order to target a shallow audience in countries such as Britain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Rich Prosecco have basically bypassed the ‘bottles only law’ by distributing the canned wine abroad only.
Giancarlo Vettorello, director of Consorzio del Tutela del Prosecco:
It is a debasement of our product and something that we will not passively accept.
It’s not the first time that countries outside of Italy have been served an fabricated story about a product and it’s connections to the Italian lifestyle and culture. Quite often products gets anchored in lies - “given values” - in the aim to get a bigger or another revenue stream.
You can’t, for instance, buy the Peroni Nastro Azzurro beer in Italy, even though it’s market as “Peroni Nastro Azzurro is Italian style in a bottle. It brings out the Italian in you.”
In Italy, Peroni is one type of beer and Nastro Azzurro another. Peroni Nastro Azzurro is just a re-branded Nastro Azzurro that’s been given a few new values so that it can be repositioned in the beer market - made it into ‘fashion’ - in an attempt to bring in more revenue from another consumer channel.
This is nothing new, barely an example.
But I absolutely love the transparency, and the deep shallowness and stupidity of the Prosecco campaign. I think Paris Hilton says it best her self, in her song, which is also brilliantly tied to the campaign and available on the Prescco website, Stars are Blind.
Even though the gods are crazy
Even though the stars are blind
If you show me real love baby
I’ll show you mine
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